Friday, May 29, 2015

I'm Still Ridin With The King

I heard the following words spoken by a guy in the year 2000, taken from a cut entitled ‘Riding With The King’,and I will always hold the speaker and this expression close to my heart.

I stepped out of Mississipi 
when I was 10 years old,
With a suit cut sharp as a razor
And a heart made of gold.
I had a guitar 
Hangin just about waist high
And I’m gonna play this thing
Til the day I die…

Yup. It’s B.B. King who passed this past Thursday, May 14, 2015. He was born Riley B. King on September 16, 1925, and took on the moniker  Blues Boy, while a Disc Jockey at radio station WDIA in Memphis, Tennessee. He has been recognized as B.B. King from that point forward.

When it comes to those we know, love and respect, the date of birth and date of transition may not always be remembered, but there is something in the dash that lies between those two dates that we’ll never forget. The phrase I opened this blog with is that something I’ll never forget about B.B., because from the time I first became interested in his music in 1968, I saw him live what he talked about. 

So many times we are limited in our ability to hear the story from what is called the ‘horses’ mouth’, and are restricted to biased media, and admittedly semi-factual websites like ‘Wikipedia’. Good fortune smiled on me again in this particular writing endeavor however, because last night, while my wife and I surfed the Netflix channel, what should pop up but a 2012 B.B. King documentary. So let me pass on to you, a bit of what B.B. and the people that knew him shared.

By 1940 his sole caretaker, his grandmother, had died, and at the age of 14 B.B. was on his own as a sharecropper, earning 35 cents per hundred pounds of cotton. He said he picked from ‘cain to cain’t’ which meant you picked from the time in the morning when you ‘cain’ see, till the time at night when you ‘cain’t’.

He had been farming since the age of 7 and said that he walked behind a plow mule for 18 years, 30 miles a day, 6 days a week, 6 months a year, and that if you add it up he had walked around the world. This work ethic transferred to his blues career where he averaged almost 300 one night stands a year. One of his wives, Sue Carol Hall, said he was on the road one year for 365 days, and another year, early one morning told her he was going fishing. When asked why he was wearing a silk suit, he responded…”Cause it’s all I got.”

B.B. King was a multi millionaire when he died and albeit money was certainly a catalyst and sustainer of the altered lifestyle that came with time, he never faltered in his mission. As he put it, “I want everybody to hear and know B.B. King and his music.

Something I noticed in watching that 2012 documentary, was an eighty-six year old blues legend who seemed to have no regrets. He had lost two wives to divorce, and had missed a lot of lost time that he could have spent with his children. His sentiments? “Marriage should not be a part of a musician’s life until he stops traveling, and I tell my kids, grandkids, and great grandkids I love them as much as I can, cause although I know he did, my daddy never told me."

We can definitely learn from others what to do and what not to do before we make that choice. What B.B. leaves with us is to be dedicated to what you do, but be aware of how what you do affects those everyone around you, especially those closest to you. He leaves a wonderful legacy but a somewhat broken family dream. Balance is what is missing in most of our lives, and every now and again we must STOP, reassess who and where we are in our quest, and then readjust whatever is needed to get back on track.

I thank B.B. King for sharing the joy and pain of his life with us all through his music, and for his ardent dedication to letting the world know that we all have a story to tell and must tell it through whatever means we have available to us. As B.B. has said to himself, I now say to you… “Saw a little boy remind me of me, and said what can I tell him? And I thought,…The sky’s the limit”.

I’ll holla…


To comment or respond please click on the word comments at the bottom of this page, or email me at grace.calvin187@gmail.com

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